


Knife Edge

by Gone_to_Florrum



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Bounty Hunters, F/M, Giant snakes, Origin Story, Sex, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-29
Updated: 2013-09-29
Packaged: 2017-12-27 23:31:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/984942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gone_to_Florrum/pseuds/Gone_to_Florrum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every bounty hunter's got their own story. Bane doesn't particularly want to revisit his, especially not with her in tow.... But hey, a job's a job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I'd try my hand at a Cad Bane origin story of sorts. There will be a fair bit of jumping back and forth between past and present here, but the flashbacks are going to be arranged in linear order. While this is predominantly a Cad-centric fic there will be a fair bit of Aurra in there too.

There are moments when fate pauses on a knife edge and waits for a decision. 

The young Duros knew instinctively that this was one of those moments. It wasn't just about taking the blaster, dull and worn, from its place in the bottom drawer; it was about what would come after. Leave it be and life would trundle on in the same trajectory as it always had been: a job at the ore processing plant like his father, a wife who'd gradually start to bear a disturbing similarity to his mother, a few sons for whom his greatest ambition would be a slightly better job at the ore processing plant. A small life, safe and predictable. Take it and he'd be hurtled off that course and into the unknown: the only certainty that the future  however long that might last for him  wouldn't involve watching his life pass by one oxide load at a time.

"Well?" Garu was nervous, his excitement, so strong a few hours ago, turning to fear as teenage fantasy began to look like it might actually start transitioning into reality.

He continued to stare at his late Great Uncle's most carefully guarded secret.

"Cad, maybe we shouldn't do this."

The younger of the two youths glanced up at his second cousin and was struck for the first time by the conscious realisation that while all their schemes seemed to originate with Garu, it was always left to him, Cad, to make the first breach in the barrier between possibility and actuality. Garu lived in his own head. If it wasn't for Cad all of the flights of fancy would stay there. No distilling spirits in a can under the bed. No selling the mildly toxic result to the other kids on the block. No sneaking out to that Togrutan titty bar. No riding on 'borrowed' speeder bikes. This time it would be no different. Garu had seen the Wanted poster and the words 'twenty-thousand credits' and had pictured himself as one of those anti-hero guns for hire you saw in Coruscant holos. A romantic daydream. Left to his own devices it would only be a few days before he was dreaming of life as a swoop racer or troubadour instead.

"Cad?" 

He said nothing, his attention back on the blaster and the matter of his destiny.

On the floor below their mothers quarrelled about who was going to get the old man's crockery.

"It probably doesn't even work." Garu was pleading now.

Cad knew it wasn't true. He'd peered through the crack in the door while his Great Uncle had stripped down and cleaned the thing. You didn't do that to a broken piece of equipment, especially when it was a reminder of the bad old days before the family had made the leap from criminal underbelly to lower class respectability. No, the old man must have kept it out of some residual fear that a figure from the past might show up one day to settle some long hidden score.

"We could go to Arizio's," Garu said. "There's this new green girl there. Nobody knows what species she is, but Fin Mo says that she looks a bit like that Twi'lek from _Palace of Sin_ without the lekku, he says that she'll do anything for a couple of deathsticks, we could go and see if it's true. Or we could go to the track, I heard that Jirana's racing again...." 

The prattling went on, but Cad filtered it out. He could not however filter out the squabbling women downstairs, the clank of the freight trucks, the whirring of the ore processing plant or the dreary trudge of honest working men towards it.

Twenty thousand credits. It wasn't a fortune, but it wouldn't be _that_.

He made his choice.


	2. Part 1

**NOW**

As the display boards extended the predicted delay from thirty minutes to forty-five Bane exhaled with irritation, breath turning to mist as soon as it hit the air. Even here in bowels of the accursed planet's only spaceport it was freezing: the temperature only just high enough for a Duros without thermal clothing to avoid physical damage. 

Aware that he was he was being watched by at least twelve different sets of eyes, he suppressed the urge to shudder and draw his duster more tightly around him. It wouldn't do to show any sign of discomfort or discomposure: not here where his identity was plain for all to see.

He wanted a drink: hot vobine milk with Corellian brandy. However, one whiff of the last one the Whiphid at the concessions stand had served up had been enough to tell his olfactory receptors that it was laced with four types of sedative and two varieties of disinhibitor. Somebody had paid the Whiphid to spike it; doubtless one or more of the beings currently loitering around the seating area. His gaze flicked from a solitary Wookiee studying what looked to be some kind of ancient treasure map, to trio of Human mechanics, to a tableful of Weequay pirates (Ohnaka Gang), to a squat, six-eyed creature who seemed to be in the process of trying to devour the duraplastic chair that it was sitting on. The smart money was on the pirates, but you could never tell. 

With the exception of Six Eyes none of them looked particularly pleased to be there, but then nobody in full possession of their senses came to Ice Point unless they could possibly help it. Embedded in the rock and permafrost of Zofren's narrow band of equatorial tundra, the port served an odd combination of geo-scientists, smugglers, haunted loners and respectable merchant men who didn't quite have enough fuel to make it to the next outpost on the run. It was drab, Spartan and cold, with even the in-port quarters (rented by the half-day and exorbitantly priced) failing to provide anything that could be reasonably described as heat. In the quarter century since he'd first walked out of the Number Five docking bay and into the main dome, the place hadn't changed a bit: beige walls, grey floors, a clothing supplier, a hardware outlet, a droid mechanic, a booking agent, three bars, two brothels (the only warm places in the whole damned complex) and a few grim-faced vendors on the concourse. The only difference was that his first visit had been accompanied with a sense of wonder that seemed entirely alien him now.

He'd been so young.

And stupid.

As the tannoy reminded visitors that droids weren't permitted to enter the habitation areas, he grudgingly allowed his mind to drift back to the events that had led him there the first time.

**-o0O0o-**

**THEN**

In the end it had been so much easier than he'd thought it would be. Anticlimactic, almost.

The aim. The shot. The recoil. The body clattering to the metal walkway.

Nervous agitation followed by an odd sort of blankness. Wasn't killing another sentient supposed to be difficult? 

A retching noise drew his attention away from existential matters and back towards his older cousin who was vomiting up his liquid courage behind a section of industrial waste disposal chute. He hadn't wanted Garu to follow him to the capital; had told him that he'd buy him a second hand swoop bike with some of the bounty money if he stayed where he was. Garu had, for the first time ever, adamantly refused. For a while this had puzzled Cad. Garu didn't want to be a bounty hunter, not really. It was only the image that had ever appealed to him. Then he'd realised that the insistence on coming had had nothing to do with the killing or the credits and everything to do with the fear that Cad would leave him alone and never come back. It was a reasonable fear. Cad hadn't planned on going back. 

How could he? The killing itself might have failed to take the expected toll, but he knew that he couldn't return to the family home and sit at the dinner table with his parent and say that the credits had come from a month long labouring job in the south. They'd never believe it... though they'd desperately try to pretend that they did. They were simple not stupid, and the prospect of meeting his mother's eyes was one he wasn't prepared to entertain.

He looked again at Garu who'd finished vomiting and was now emitting strange choked noises. He should have left in the night without a word, but hadn't quite felt able to go without saying goodbye to his only real friend only real *living* friend, he mentally corrected himself, thinking briefly of Prew. She would have probably followed him here too, but he doubted that she'd have freaked out like Garu. 

"Help me get him into the box."

The sharpness of the command was enough to snap Garu out of his fog of panic. Thankfully he wasn't as squeamish about handling corpses as he was about making them and they soon had the Rodian's remains in the sealed repulsor lift hand cart they'd swiped from a building site a few days earlier. 

"Cad, what if someone saw." The voice was small, quiet.

"They didn't." He'd made sure of that, chosen a back alley in the middle of the main industrial district that didn't have any windows or doors opening out into it. "Besides, it's not as if any of the police round here would care. They'd just take the body and claim the money themselves." After taking the blaster and dispensing a sound beating, of course, but he saw no reason to mention this.

"Oh." Garu didn't sound certain, but Cad didn't care.

"When we get to the club, let me do the talking."

Their journey wasn't a long one. The Loco red light district was only a few miles away from the Sharrd Industrial Park, easily accessible by the city's public transit system. As far as the other commuters were concerned the two scruffily attired Duros boys with a hand cart were nothing out of the ordinary, just another couple of menial workers on an errand. They alighted on a bustling street illuminated by the kind of harsh neon that only serves highlight the grime of the place. Hookers, hustlers, spice dealers, low lives and thugs: here was where the dregs swam. As he gazed cautiously around it struck Cad that a clever predator could use a shoal like this as cover. 

"Come on," he said to Garu, who was already gawping at a blue Twi'lek in a gauzy see-through dress. "You can look at the females later."

The other youth grudgingly tore his eyes away from the Twi'lek and began to follow as Cad led the way towards a building with a giant illuminated snake's head on the frontage: The Gold Serpent, de facto headquarters of Don Netro's underworld operation. Outside, a queue of expensively dressed Nautolans and Duros was already forming, a mass of giggling, jittery herd animals. Rich kids slumming it, he thought contemptuously, as he and Garu passed them. Neither received slightest bit of attention from the club goers, who doubtless deemed the pair beneath their notice.

One hand on the blaster in his pocket, Cad led them down a narrow passageway to the club's back entrance. When they were half-way between main strip and back road a figure stepped out of the shadows and into their path. A Weequay, rail thin and reeking of alcohol and stale piss. 

"Well, well, well, what do we 'ave 'ere." He leered, revealing a rotting set of teeth, held up a smashed bottle... and froze as his eyes met the younger boy's. 

Cad would never be quite sure what the Weequay saw there, but it was enough to make him emit a strangled cry and dive behind a large metal dumpster. For a split second he considered pursuing the would-be mugger and putting a bolt in his head, but decided against it. The last thing he needed was Garu having another episode.

"Come on," he ordered, glancing back at his cousin. In the gloom of the passage he couldn't clearly see his features, but his breath, quick and gasping suggested that he was close to panic again. 

The door to the back of the club was open when they got there, a middle-aged Rodian female standing just behind the threshold and taking short, angry puffs on a rhyll pipe. She was armed, but not heavily: a lookout rather than a guard. 

"What do you want?" she demanded, voice nasal and gurgling at the same time. The pipe was obviously a long term fixture.

Garu opened his mouth, shut it and then made an incoherent spluttering sound.

Cad reached for the lid on the hand cart and flipped it open. 

She looked from Cad to the corpse and back again, the expression on her face becoming a pale echo of the one the Weequay had worn just before fleeing. She took a long, deep drag on the pipe. "You better bring it in."

 

Don Netro's seat of power was a red couch on raised platform towards the back of a large, expensively tiled chamber. He was, Cad saw, an old man, but not a decrepit one. The skin on his bare green arms was puckered and covered in age blotches, but it overlay a seam of wiry muscle. As Nautolans went Netro had never been one of the bulkier specimens, but he clearly hadn't left the more physical aspect of the job to his lackeys either. To his left and right sat two beautiful Togrutan girls, decked out jewels and fabrics that had to have been shipped in from the Deep Core. Various beings milled about the floor of the chamber, all moving with a slow careful wariness, as if one indelicate move or sound would bring down wrath from above.... Perhaps it would.

Speaking quickly, in a dialect of Huttese that Cad couldn't follow, the Rodian woman gestured to the two youths and their burden. When she'd finished Netro dismissed her with a gesture and she scurried quietly away. 

As the Nautolan turned his gaze towards him, Cad found himself trying to work out what the best mode of escape would be if things turned ugly. The Rodian had let him keep hold of the blaster; but the five heavily armed Zabraks stationed at the chamber's only visible exit would be more than a match for him.... Perhaps if he shot Netro dead the entourage would be in too much of a hurry to grab as much as they could that they'd let him slip away. The guards didn't look like the Loyal After Death sort.

As if sensing the direction that his thoughts were taking the old man gave a chuckle and stood, the outlines of a personal force shield shimmering as he did so. "What's your name, boy?"

"Cad." As he said the word it occurred to him that it might have been better to call himself something else, a name other than the one his parents had given him. It was too late now though, Netro was already saying it to himself, face speculative.

"A good name," he concluded after a few repetitions.

Cad said nothing. He didn't like Netro or the air of faux-fatherly cheerfulness he seemed to be trying to adopt. The two young Togrutan girls with the silver collars around their necks hinted that he wasn't into young Duros boys in *that* way, but there was still something unpleasantly acquisitive about his gaze. 

"I'm Garu," his cousin piped up, voice scared and excited in about equal measure.

"A good name too." The Nautolan smiled indulgently at him, before returning his attention to Cad. "You did well to snare him so quickly. Our little thief was proving quite elusive."

Cad shrugged. The truth was that it hadn't been difficult. He'd figured that, having been stupid enough to disappear straight after pilfering from his boss's jewellery box, Netro's former errand runner wouldn't have the sense or the guts to try and blend into the sea of Rodian service workers who filled the city's commercial quarter: on show but invisible. No, a being like that who didn't have enough ready cash to flee the zone would try to hole up somewhere quiet and out of sight until he could figure out how to change gems into credits without Netro getting wind of it. It had been easy enough to narrow down the possible locations after that, and the Rodian hadn't done a particularly good job of trying to conceal himself in Sharrd.

"The poster said there was a twenty thousand credit reward."

Another chuckle. "Straight down to business, I see.... But I wonder, how would you like to triple it?"

Cad's eyes narrowed. "What do you want me to do?"

"Have you ever heard of the Zofren System?"

He hadn't, but he was prepared to be educated.


	3. Part 2

He snapped out of his reminiscence a fraction of a second before she spotted him.

Sporting a thick fur coat and Wampa-skin boots over her trademark orange one-piece, she strode through the disembarking throng, beings scattering out of her path like a shoal of skitterfish who’d just had a head-on collision with a reef shark. 

There was a certain pleasure to be derived from watching it.

He gave a small nod of acknowledgement as she stepped out of the throughflow and into the seating alcove. She responded with a quirked half-smile. If he hadn’t known better he would have suspected that she was pleased to see him. When she took the seat opposite him the Weequay pirates – previously the rowdiest bunch in the area – began to mutter quietly amongst themselves. 

“You took your time,” he said, by way of greeting.

“Karlinus Rot scare. They’re making all ships coming in from the Chommell Sector undergo enhanced decon.”

“What, they’re worried dat a bit of mould might lower the tone of de place?” 

“We’re on a minor spice route. That stuff eats through glitterstim.” She looked at the pirates and smirked. “Hondo doesn’t take kindly to his shipments disappearing; and somehow I don’t think ‘I’m sorry Boss, it all turned into fungus’ would wash any better than ‘womprats ate my cargo’.”

The Weequay, no longer bothering to make even a token pretence at ignoring the bounty hunters’ presence, stared at her.

She smirked. “Isn’t that right, _Domar_?”

One of the pirates, a tall, comparatively lean specimen who was gnarled even by Weequay standard, snorted and held up a prosthetic hand.

“If I’d ‘ad longer to think I could’ve come up with a better story than that.”

The other pirates laughed, with the exception of the youngest member of the group, who merely glowered. _Kids_ , they always took this stuff so damned seriously. 

“Course, as I remember it. You wanted to chop off both my ‘ands... and my ‘ead.”

There was another round of laugher, this one tinged with hint of nervousness. 

She made a dismissive gesture. “Hondo always was a sentimentalist.”

“Lucky for you. Any other man would ‘ave left you for dead after that mess with Fett’s kid. I know I would.” 

At that Bane allowed himself a chuckle. He’d met enough of Ohnaka’s men to know that Aurra Sing’s stint with the gang had been a somewhat _divisive_ matter. A few of them had appreciated the uncompromising approach to business. Most had been glad to see the back of her.

“He’s got more courage than the rest of you put together.” Typical Aurra. She’d publically slander Ohnaka one moment and defend him the next.

“So, what should I tell the Boss, that his favourite bit of trouble’s on ‘er back for some Duros in a big hat?” Domar’s compatriot’s visibly gaped as the words left his mouth. To Bane’s surprise and the pirates’ obvious astonishment, she did not however instantly vaporise him. Instead the smirk returned. 

“Remind him that I’ve still got the Joranda haul. If he wants his share he better start thinking about how he’s going to beg for it.”

The youngest pirate, who’d been growing visibly more restless throughout the exchange, jumped to his feet. “Are we going to just let ‘er talk like that?” 

“Sit down, Zal.” Domar rose and put hand on the youth’s shoulder. 

Zal shook it off. “Why should I. There’s six of us ‘ere. She’s just one ugly whore with a blaster. ”

“Oh, kark.” In the split second before the bolt hit, Bane saw a look of resignation on Domar’s scar-ridden face. 

The boy didn’t scream instantly. For a few seconds he looked blankly at the smoking stump that once been his right leg. When he started however he didn’t stop. It was a high pitched, keening wail, the kind made an animal in trap. Muttering amongst themselves, the three human mechanics seated nearby got up and headed towards the dome, unfazed by the blaster fire, but clearly irked by the noise the maimed being was making. The Whipid at the concessions stand merely glanced over before going back to his datapad.

After several moments of inaction two of the Weequay picked up their comrade and carried him – screams intensifying – onto the concourse and in the direction of what Bane could only assume was their ship. Neither made much attempt to disguise the fact that they were picking the youngster’s pockets as they did this.

“Poor bastard,” Domar muttered.

Aurra slid the blaster back into its holster and made a dismissive gesture. “I just taught him a valuable life lesson.”

“If ‘ee lives.”

She shrugged. “If he doesn’t then consider it a favour.”

The two other remaining Weequay looked at Domar, who shook his head. Bane watched with detached interest as they gathered their things and followed in the wake of the unlucky Zal.

“What was dat about?” he asked, jerking his head towards the departing pirates.

“The little sleemo called me a whore.”

“I mean de rest of it. You knew they’d be there, didn’t choo? Tryin’ to get back at Ohnaka for something?” _Or tryin’ to get back with Ohnaka_ , he mentally added.

“It’s a private matter.”

“Looked pretty damned public to me.”

She didn’t reply. Curious as he was, he refrained from prying further. No point getting her riled up when she was already in a trigger happy frame of mind. He hadn’t known that she’d had anything to do with the Joranda pleasure cruiser raid, but it made sense. It had been slicker than Ohnaka Gang’s usual modus operandi... colder too.

“You got what I asked for?” he said, getting back to business. It was why they were there, after all. Or at least why he was there.

“All of it.”

He nodded.

She leaned across the table as if she was about to kiss him. The sudden proximity of her body heat made him once more palpably aware of just how cold he was. “How long before Fiorli makes his move?”

“How long does it take for a rumour to get from here to Coruscant?” He replied, finding himself having to resist the urge to slide his freezing fingers underneath her furs. He noted that the Wookiee five tables down was pretending not to stare. “Choo made enough of an entrance.”

Her lips curved upwards. “You call _that_ an entrance.”

He shrugged. “He knows I’m here. He’ll know that you’re here soon enough. We just have to wait for him to make an offer.”

“We’re just killing time then?” 

“For now.”

She leaned back and peered into the Dome, eyes disdaining what they saw. “So what are you going to do, find a Twi’lek dancer that charges by the hour?”

His eyes went to a lurid neon sign on the far side of the concourse. The name had changed since the last time he was there, but it didn’t look like much else had – except perhaps the girls themselves. “You got a better suggestion?”

“Maybe.”

As long fingers settled on his thigh, the olfactory glands in his eyes were hit by a mixture of pheromones and a sickly sweet herbal smell. He’d encountered them both before, but never together. It was wrong. Jarring.

“You been smoking sugar dust?”

She snorted and withdrew her hand. “Does it look like it?” 

It didn’t. Her eyes didn’t have the right kind of fever-brightness for the local spice. Besides, he’d only ever seen her take a drag on a pipe a handful of times, and it had always been relaxants rather than stimulants... something to be grateful for, perhaps.

“You reek of it.” The words were more accusatory than were warranted. 

“The ship had a bar.” She stood, looking decidedly put out. “Enjoy your Twi’lek, Bane.”

He said nothing, recalling the first time he’d encountered the scent.

**-o0O0o-**

**THEN**

Garu’s eyes lit up as soon as he saw the inside of the Dome. They’d lit up in much the same the same way at the Sharrd transport hub, the cross-planetary passenger ferry, the cargo hulk that had taken them out into interstellar space, the Sector Interchange, and even the garbage scow they’d stowed away on to get to Ice Point. After the Interchange the boy now calling himself Cad had given up on trying to get his cousin to go home or take up some mundane job. Truth be told, there was something humiliatingly reassuring about the older boy’s presence. Familiarity in the maelstrom of excitement... and he was excited, there was no denying that. He’d played it cool so far; been unimpressed by the slow, aged vessels and bland passenger waiting areas. This place though felt like it was on The Edge. The edge of what he wasn’t quite sure; but dilapidated as it was, the spark of danger here was more thrilling than the mundane wariness about pickpockets and slavers he’d felt at the Interchange, or the anxiety at the prospect of discovery on the scow. Of course, the fact that he was fast approaching the point where he’d have to carry out Nestro’s order probably had something to do with it; but it was exhilaration not apprehension that filled him.

“Look!” Garu exclaimed, jabbing a finger at a group of beings in brightly coloured costumes who were gathered together outside the grease smeared frontage of a droid repair shop. With the exception of a tall, imperious Togrutan female in tick furs they were all inappropriately attired for the climate. 

“Don’t be such a tourist,” Cad muttered, pulling the thermal cloak he’d swiped from the scow’s unwitting captain around him. There was no real admonishment in his voice though. After all, who’d believe that a hired killer would wander around with a wide-eyed, gawking fool like Garu. 

...And besides, some of the girls were real pretty, especially the two Twi’leks, he could hardly blame him for staring..

“But it’s the Merry Jinx Cabaret! Their posters are all over Sharrd.” 

Cad shrugged. Half the two-bit acts in the Sector had posters in Sharrd... though he did recall seeing the Merry Jinx advertised in a slightly better class of neon than some of the others. 

Garu, grinning like an idiot, waved at a petite, sweet-face Theelin girl amongst the throng, who smiled and waved back, before flushing and looking down as the slightly older Theelin standing next to her started to snigger. 

He turned his attention back to Cad. “So what do we do now?” 

“I’m going to look for the Recruiting Office.”

“You’re going to get a job? I thought you were going to—”

Cad cut off his cousin with an elbow to the ribs. “It’s the easiest way to get out onto the surface,” he hissed.

“Oh.” Garu looked at him uncomprehending. He had clearly not given much thought to precisely how the task was going to be accomplished. Cad however had been mulling it over since they’d departed from Sharrd. Netro had told them about the little hideaway one of his minor rivals had carved out for himself on one of Zofren’s many inhospitable landmasses, clearly believing the terrain to be a suitable defence against any would-be assassins. However, there were a few hardly mining operations and scientific explorations running out there, even beyond the bits that were considered marginally habitable.

“Why don’t you wait here?” he said, gesturing to dingy seating alcove where a Rodian with a chronic case of scale rot was hawking what looked to be watered down pints of gizer ale. Better not to show up with Garu in tow and risk him making the rep suspicious. 

“I don’t have any money,” Garu protested.

Reluctantly Cad reached into the pouch he kept hidden under his clothes and removed low value credit chip. He hadn’t let Garu carry any of the bounty money he’d been paid on Sharrd since he’d been drawn into that sabaac game with those three maintenance workers on the Cosmic Tide cargo freighter.

“There.”

Garu grinned and grabbed the chip, before rushing off to buy a few substandard pints from the Rodian.

Finding the Dome’s Recruiting Office was not a difficult task. Convincing the Recruitment _Officer_ from the Deep Drill mining outfit that the skinny Duros kid before him was suitable material for work on one of the northern prospecting surveys.

“What d’you want t’ do that for lad?” the gravelly voiced human said, taking a slug from a bottle of strong smelling spirits, before passing it to the enormous Wookiee female who seemed to be his drinking buddy. “Scrawny whippet like you wouldn’t last two minutes out on the frost. If you want to take a look around outside why don’t you ask one of the geologists for a little fetch and carry job on Blue Rock Island.”

“Geologists don’t pay a bonus if they find anything,” he said. “If you hit lyrium under the ice fields—”

“Big _if_ lad. The scans were inconclusive.” The large man shook his head and gave a gap-toothed smile that was surprising in its kindness. “Besides, what would you do? Yer not built for heavy lifting, and something tells me you ‘aven’t had much experience with the machinery.”

“I could learn,” he said, taking care to put just the right amount of youthful petulance into his voice. “I’m good at learning things. And I can crawl into tunnels.” He gave his jaw a determined set.

The man sighed and looked at the Wookiee. “Kids,” he muttered. The Wookiee made a noise of assent and mimed what appeared to be a painful and agonising death from falling rocks.

The Human then spent several more minutes trying to dissuade the young Duros from embarking upon what would quite likely prove to be a suicidal endeavour: pointing out the dangers of the climate, the terrain, the unpredictable equipment... the unpredictable miners. However, once it became clear that boy wasn’t for budging he sighed again, pulled out a datapad detailing the standard company contract and handed it over. “We’ll provide the headgear, but it’s up to you to find the thermals.”

Cad read the contract, comprised mainly of a waiver barring the employee or their family to sue in the (highly likely) event of death, injury of severe emotional trauma from witnessing the same, and signed. Then he left the office as three heavily built Zabraks, each with at least one prosthetic limb shuffled in. 

Well, that was step one complete. Netro’s money would pay for the clothing and hardware he needed; though he’d have to make it look like he was barely able to afford it.

He headed back to the place where he’d left Garu and found his cousin sitting at a table with the Theelin girl from the cabaret. He saw them laughing amidst a haze of bluish smoke. A staccato, convulsive sort of laugh. Intrigued – and worried that Garu had gone and bought a wrapper of Maarish Silver on credit – he wandered over, taking in the profusion of Weequay who seemed to have appeared. _Pirates_ , he thought, though their emblem didn’t mean anything to him. Probably small time. 

Garu frowned as Cad approached, clearly put out by the reappearance of his younger cousin now that things were going so obviously well with the girl. The fact that she was now wearing the thermal cloak Cad had stolen for Garu attested to just how well things were going. As he drew nearer his eyes began to water, the scent glands assailed by a heavy waft of a sickly sweet herbal smell. Not Maarish Silver then.

The Theelin girl looked up at him, eyes wide and sparkling. Up close she was beautiful. Not perhaps as beautiful as the Twi’leks, with their long smooth lekku and ample bosoms; but he could see why Garu was happy to freeze on her behalf. Though he didn’t look like he was freezing at the moment. Quite the opposite. 

“Is that your brother?” the girl asked, her voice was soft and melodious. 

“My cousin T—”

“Cad,” he said. 

“Just Cad?” She lifted a small but ornate copper pipe to her lips. 

“Just Cad.”

“This is Minka,” Garu announced, voice filled with pride. “She’s a singer.”

“Not if she keeps smoking sugar dust,” a voice, harsh, cold and female sounded out.

Minka cowered as the imperious Togruta in furs strode into the alcove, unconcerned by the lascivious stares some of the Weequay gave her made as she passed.

“Madam Ti’Amara,” the girl whimpered, pipe clattering to the table.

Without a further word, the Togruta yanked the girl up by the hair and dragged her away, still swathed in Garu’s cloak. 

Delighted the spectacle the Weequay began to hoot and make lewd suggestion. One of them, a young, brawny specimen in an expensive looking red coat, reached over and plucked up the pipe. Cad watched as he inspected the engravings on the cylinder. “Nice piece,” he said, and pocketed it.

“Hey, that’s not yours,” Garu cried out, jumping to his feet.

“Finders keepers,” the Weequay said, before looking at his companions in a way that clearly said _Can you believe this kid_.

“Leave it,” Cad muttered, putting a hand on his shoulder. For one horrible moment he thought that Garu was going to launch himself at the Weequay. Then, his body stiffened, the spice high no longer enough to keep out the cold. 

The Weequay laughed. “Go and find your cousin a coat before he freezes to death.”

Cad said nothing, eyes still stinging from the fumes.


End file.
